Overview

Salat Camii Yanı, a Pottery Neolithic site in the Turkish Tigris valley, is located about 20 km east of the modern city of Bismil in Diyarbakır province, southeastern Turkey. Due to the construction of the Ilısu Dam reservoir on the Tigris the site was investigated by a Turkish-Japanese archaeological mission directed by Dr. Yutaka Miyake of the University of Tsukuba and the Diyarbakır Museum.

During five seasons field work from 2004 to 2009 (Miyake 2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2008), a thick cultural deposit from the Pottery Neolithic was excavated to reach virgin soil at about 4.5m below the surface. While several features from later periods, i.e. storage pits from the Iron Age and the Islamic period, were recovered on the surface, no evidence of Pre-Pottery Neolithic occupation was found. It is suggested that the site was mainly inhabited during the Pottery Neolithic period in the 7th millennium cal. BC.